Avoiding Search
Engine Penalty.
Tony Subia May 2004
Subia Interactive.com

Words of Warning
Don’t assume that because violations appear in the search results that they can be condoned. And remember that penalties are selectively enforced which means they can be manually applied. Search engines can either detect guideline infractions through spam filters or

human review, which is usually spawned by a spam report. Although web spammers may appear in search results, they may have already been “silently penalized” (not obvious), may not have yet been discovered or the violations are purposely left in the results to test spam filters. In any case, be advised that sooner or later websites that flagrantly violate webmaster guidelines will likely be penalized and the severity of the penalty is based on the severity of abuse.

Ultimate Responsibility
Web pages get penalized and websites get banned. Therefore it is website owners that ultimately pay the price of guideline violation. Owners must take an active interest in self-protection. A written optimization policy should be created with defined accountability to protect against guideline infraction. Since search engine guidelines are subject to change, it is advisable to frequently review the major search engine guidelines and terms of use and modify your policy accordingly.

No Hidden Text
This guideline is very clear. Don’t hide text from a user whether or not such text is relevant to a search query. There are many devious methods of hiding keywords including same color text on same (or substantially same) color background, using text too small to read or purposely-obscuring text with a background treatment. Other violations include hiding keywords in css layers and within source code areas that are fed to a spider without screen presentation to the user.

New techniques are being discovered. Be warned that spam filters are continuously being developed and even if you avoid those, human reviews spawned by spam reports can result in future penalty. Don’t be tempted. Eventually deceptive methods will be caught.

If your web page needs stronger keyword frequency and density, your time is best spent creating content that is well-balanced with targeted keywords.

No Keyword Stuffing
Don’t consecutively list keywords over and over, which is called keyword stuffing. Search engine algorithms reward content that uses good balance of keywords which strengthens informative value. Always write copy with reasonable keyword frequency, ratio and proximity. Overzealous repetition of keywords that merely form a list of keywords could result in a ranking penalty.

No Hidden Links
The purpose of linking is providing other sources of information to a user. Therefore links must be reasonably noticeable to the user. Hidden links will be interpreted as artificial attempts to build link popularity for the “receiving page”. When discovered, the web page that “sends the hidden link” is most likely the one to be penalized.

Link spammers have used just about every possible method of hiding links including 1 pixel gifs, within punctuation marks (periods, commas) same color on same color, very tiny graphical elements and almost infinite other devious methods. Be advised that creating links for the sole purpose of inflating link popularity typically carries the most severe penalty which is index expulsion.

No Devious Link Schemes
A devious link scheme is one that is solely intended to artificially inflate link popularity absent of any other meaningful purpose. Generally it includes group participation among a family of commonly owned sites or non-family sites particularly when such participating sites do not have related or compatible content.

These link schemes are generally referred to as “link farms” which can either solicit open participation or be limited to a close-knit group of participants. Whether a large open farm, a mini farm or a family of link farm participants…they can be considered a very severe violation and can often result in banishment of all participating sites.

“Reciprocal links” between “compatible sites” are encouraged where such links provide potential value to a user. Compatible sites are those having similar or complementing content. However, be careful not to expand the spirit of reciprocal (between) into a group (among) that could be interpreted as a mini link farm. The greater the number of common participants, the greater the risk.

Do not heavily cross-link from one site to another. There is no defined threshold. The safest way to point links is from text areas where the context of messaging would complement the outgoing link or from a “button banner ad”, particularly when that ad lies on a page of complementing subject matter. Avoid placing “naked links” at the bottom of all web pages for the sole purpose of increasing backlinks.

One closing comment. If a link does not provide potential value to a user, don’t link.

Cloaking
The safe answer is Don’t Cloak. But read on. Basically, cloaking is a method of delivering different content to a search engine spider than is presented to a user. Depending upon interpretation, there can be both ethical purposes of cloaking and dishonest intent to deceive search engines and users. Widespread controversy exists on whether cloaking should or should not be permitted by the search engines. For differing viewpoints, read “Ending The Debate Over Cloaking” by Danny Sullivan and “Cloaking Is Always A Bad Idea” by Alan Perkins. Then draw your own conclusions.

Search engines are not clear on whether or not they permit cloaking and if so, under what conditions and purpose. For example, in its Webmaster Guidelines (of 2/03), Google explicitly states…”Don’t employ cloaking or sneaky redirects”. Yet in FAQs, Google adds a bit of confusion with “Google may permanently ban from our index any sites or site authors that engage in cloaking to distort their search engine rankings”.

Does the confliction in those two quotes make it clear that Google does not permit cloaking at all, or does it permit cloaking if the purpose is not to “distort ranking”? It also does not intertwine “deceiving a user”. Notice the operative words “site authors” as it relates to a permanent ban. One could probably presume that a site author probably means, “site owner or site SEO”. If so, that could also mean that other sites owned by a common owner or the SEO’s website could also be banned whether or not those other sites utilize cloaking methods.

Adding further confusion is the fact that cloaking for a variety of purposes is evident within the result of all engines including Google. Does this mean cloaking is permitted in certain circumstances, penalty is selectively applied or the particular offender has yet to be caught? Until and if ever that is determined, for the long-term success of your particular website, I highly recommend that you do not cloak for any reason. Ethical or not.

Use The No Frames Tag Ethically
Do not use noframes to hide keywords. The original purpose of the noframes tag is providing alternate content for browsers that do not support frames. The purpose can be expanded as a means of providing suitable content for spiders to evaluate, which makes framed sites more search friendly. From an optimization perspective, placing keyword balanced content in the noframes tag improves the ranking potential for framed sites.

Anything you could place in a page’s body section can be put in a noframes tag. Presently, the search engines do not have written policies regarding what you can and cannot place in the noframes tag. However, since use of the tag can be abused by hiding text that can’t be viewed by a user, the search engines are likely concerned and could be developing detection filters or even watching particular sites for unethical abuse.

An honest approach (safe) is placing only a copy of the body content in the noframes tag. Since that content is viewable to a user, you would always avoid any interpretation of hiding keywords. If there is any doubt, always proceed on the caution side.

Use the noframes tag in an ethical manner that does not deceive the user or the search engine’s algorithms.

Avoid Duplicate Content
Search engines do not like duplicate or substantially similar content. This is particularly true of the “cookie-cutter” type of affiliate marketing program. Usually a search engine will just “ignore” an exact mirrored site unless the purpose is artificially inflating PageRank or link popularity in which case the risk is index expulsion. Web pages that are substantially similar could be devalued.

There are valid reasons to present very similar pages that provide user-benefit. This is typical of dynamically generated page templates with a large degree of similar content and presentation. Unfortunately, search engines do not distinguish between legitimate and deceptive intent, nor do they offer an approximate threshold difference between similar and substantially similar.

If the nature of your website requires very similar web page presentation, minimize potential risk by making your pages as different as reasonably possible. Uniquely different text is best and you might consider varying the size and position of common and similar graphical elements.

Never create mirrored websites. It can only have adverse results. And keep similar web pages as dissimilar as reasonably possible.

Doorway Pages - Proceed With Caution
Today there are varying definitions of a doorway page. Generally they are interpreted as nothing more than a collection of targeted keywords intermixed with unintelligible text. They are well-balanced with keyword frequency, density and proximity to rank highly, but provide little information value. The optimized page is presented to a spider with a different page presented to the user. Doorway pages created and used in this manner are a form of illegal cloaking, which violate search engine guidelines. Sometimes doorway pages are also called Stealth, Bridge and Gateway pages.

Some webmasters and SEOs feel that crudely prepared pages with only a collection of keywords that provide no other purpose than attaining high ranking are in fact illegal doorway pages whether they are cloaked pages or actual web pages.

That interpretation is highly debated. However, to protect against possible penalty, pages should contain well-written content that provides user value or convenience. They should be well-optimized within webmaster guidelines and should become an actual inside web page and linked from the site map and applicable navigation points so they are spiderable and viewable to a user.

Adhere to webmaster guidelines when creating the content pages, which like any other web page, can become a “doorway entry” into the website. Never use doorway pages as a cloaking process.

Don't Abuse Alt Tags
Always alt tag graphical images for the convenience of the visually impaired. However, an alt tag should accurately describe the image. Use keywords if they support an accurate description, but do not unreasonably keyword stuff with the intent of manipulating ranking. If your web page needs a better balance of keyword frequency or density, it is safer and provides improved user convenience to add keywords to the html content.